Year After Year
by FlopsyOllie
Summary: "She's finally starting to think that maybe she'll always be alone." - Emma Swan backstory, because I'm obsessed. Also my first return to fanfic since 2012


**_Year after Year_**

_I haven't written fanfic in years, but I just love Emma so much and OUAT is taking over my brain… so here's a backstory for her. Also not my best work, as I feel I can never do the lovely Emma justice. Warning: includes self-harm/drugs/suicide attempt._

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><p>She is three years old. The sunlight is streaming through the kitchen as her foster mother squishes the dough back and forth underneath the rolling pin. Emma grabs fistfuls of flour in her tiny hands, dumping it on top of her mother's hands. They are both laughing.<p>

Two months later, her mother finds out she is pregnant. They can't handle having two children right now. Emma is strapped into a car seat by her social worker, and everyone is crying. Her mother, who is no longer her mother, kisses her goodbye and gives her hand a squeeze.

"I love you so much."

She is three, and she cannot comprehend why, if they love her, she has to leave.

She is seven. Another family has taken her in, along with four other foster kids. She is the youngest, sharing a room with one other girl, Bethany, who is thirteen and wants nothing to do with her. The three boys share a room together down the hall. They all go about their business. Their foster mother, who they have to call Mrs. Rose, cooks dinner every night, but no one eats together. Emma has to pick out her own clothes every morning, and brush her own teeth, and pack her own lunch for school. The other kids make fun of her because she isn't very good at tying her own shoes. No one ever took the time to teach her.

She feels guilty for wanting more. After all, she has a bed and food and the house is warm, but it's still very lonely. No one hugs each other or asks how their day went. Emma curls up at night with her baby blanket and cries, wondering where her real parents are and why they abandoned her.

Bethany sits up in bed and stares at her.

"Quit crying, Em," she says, almost sounding sympathetic. "Crying only makes it hurt more."

..

She is eleven. She's finally starting to think that maybe she'll always be alone.

She's gone through so many foster homes, she's lost track. She's back in the group home now, returned after she broke the family's TV playing soccer in the house. Being in and out of so many homes, she's officially considered a "problem case," and time is running out for her adoption. She knows this, just like she knows Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny aren't real. She's too old, too bad to get adopted. No one wants her.

Her own parents didn't want her. Why would anyone else? Why else would everyone return her to the group home, the place where kids go when no one wants them? It seems no one will ever love her.

She is in fifth grade, and her teacher assigns everyone to look up their family tree. She sits and stares at her desk and does nothing, until the teacher comes over and asks her what's wrong.

"I don't have a family," she says quietly.

The teacher frowns, realizing her mistake, "Well Emma, we'll just find you a special project to do. A special project for an extra special girl!"

She's not special. Never has been, never will be.

She is seventeen, and she has had enough. She doesn't care if she as one year until she gets out of the system – one year is too long. The mere thought makes her want to jump off of the nearest bridge.

It's night, November. She spent months collecting as much cash as she could, enough to pay for a bus ticket. The clerk at the Greyhound bus station hardly gives her a second glance – just another kid with a backpack full of everything she owns, running towards nothing. The bus gets her as far as Ohio. After that, she hitchhikes, slowly learning the rules of the road. No rides with truckers who want anything in return – safer if they mention they have families, even a dog. Stay away from drugs and alcohol – she needs to stay sober to stay alive. If she senses danger, something she's grown good at over the years, she jumps out as fast as possible. If they won't let her go, she fights her way out. Every move is about survival.

After a few weeks, she finds herself in Oregon, and that's a good a place as any to steal a car. Anything is better than sleeping with one eye open in the back of a tractor trailer. As fate would have it, that's when she finds Neal, when she finds love and trust, and where she finds all of that taken from her once again.

She's in prison, completely broken down, hollowed out, and she's pregnant. There's a baby, and a broken little girl can't raise a baby.

She gives the baby away. Two months later, she is out of prison. She takes the yellow bug he left her and drives to Tallahassee. And waits.

She is twenty. It's been two years since she last saw him. Despite her upbringing, she is still naïve enough to believe he might come back for her one day. So she went to the city they had chosen for their home, and waited. She has no idea how to get a job, so she mostly lives on the streets, breaks into different motels when she can, sleeps in the backseat of the bug with the doors locked. She lands a waitressing job for a while, but her boss is constantly trying to feel her up and she can't stand looking at all the toddlers coming in to eat with their mothers, so she quits.

She waits. And waits. But he never shows up. That's when she realizes, she truly is unlovable. She has no one. No one will ever want her.

She waits for two years, and all that waiting takes a toll.

It's February, so it's a little cold, even for Florida. She pickpockets a wallet with a few hundred dollar bills, and buys a bag of pills. It doesn't matter what they are, just enough to put her to sleep.

She goes into the back alley where she parked her bug, sits down in the dirt, and swallows pill after pill until the bag is nearly empty. She uses her trusty pocket knife to slice down her left forearm, for good measure.

Eventually, everything goes black. The next thing she knows, she wakes up to bright white lights and a nurse asking her name, over and over, because she has no ID. Is there any family to call?

No. No family.

No one is coming to save her.

That's the worst thing. Waking up, and she's not dead, and no one is coming to claim her. She is alone.

Alone, and alive. A second chance.

She has a pumped stomach and twenty-nine stitches, and she's not dead yet. That's got to mean something.

…

Once the hospital discharges her, she gets her car back. She drives. Eventually, she gets a job, and an apartment, different apartments in different cities. It isn't until Henry knocks on her door eight years later, that she finally feels something like… _home._


End file.
